Continued, The Correspondent
Rosalie Van Antwerp
Hello, Rosalie. I am writing because I know Paul’s surgery is Friday.
I hope you have prepared well in advance, and have some kind of assistance with care lined up.
To answer your questions, Harry has left, I have not heard from the DNA relation in Scotland, and things are going along fine with Mick Watts.
I am reading To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf.
And lastly, you asked if everything is all right.
No, everything is not all right. I cannot quite manage to move past the fact that you, my best friend, the person I held dearest to myself, would betray me by hosting my own daughter, who, as you very well know, I see once a year if I am lucky, and keep it from me.
How humiliating, that you and she should see fit to need to conduct clandestine meetings.
How wonderful it must be for you to have such a strong bond with Fiona, such an intimate, confiding relationship.
I cannot imagine such a pleasure, but it sounds WONDERFUL.
I just relish the thought of her cozying up in your den telling you all the ways in which I have failed her as a mother, and how glad she is to have a surrogate in you.
I hate to think how bereft she would be if not for you, Rosalie.
You and I have enjoyed an honest, confrontational friendship for going on sixty years, and I cherished it. Good luck with Paul next week. In all hope, it’ll go smoothly for him.
Sybil
Postscript: For your information, before the letter in which you confessed to your little surprise reunion behind my back I was unaware of Fiona’s troubles with infertility and miscarriages, so thank you for providing me with that information.